Ways of We

Ways of We

by Ryan Billington

December 21, 2011

The differences 'tween ways of "we"

That some cause rage and some cause glee

So random, indistinguished, free;

That with you, might I simply be

In unadorned simplicity.

Yet switch me to another "we"

To learn synthesis of austerity

Though hard we strive, nere to see

A more twisted connectivity--

A mess of me in we.

Stark dichotomy is this:

The first--surreal, ethereal bliss

"Possible" eclipsed by surprising tryst

A world repainted with magic's kiss

Encompassed by enlightened mist

We dash along each other's twists,

And in "we," I find me free.

The second path, e'er more so tangled

The twists between, so gnarled, mangled

Damage by confused harangules*

Speeches choked with gangled jangles

So lost are we, in woods, triangled

'Tween you and me and we...

Lost in missed simplicity.

I wish to emphasize a truth--

Though discordancies run uncouth,

While harmony reigns in youth

In these different paths of "we,"

These different degrees of simplicity,

That one is not e'er set in better

Though easier it may be forever

But both essential, learning tethers

To life, you, me, and we--

To matchless, danced complexity--

Truths in ways of we.

*Harangule -  a mid-sized diatribe, in a similar juxtaposition as the mid-sized SUV, or arterioles and venules in the human body; a medium-sized verbal attack. 

Thoughts and Tuxedos

        To date, this blog has been a compiling of more formal written works.  Polished.  Edited.  Re-drafted.  I think I'm going to try to change the the flavor of it all.  And this is difficult for me.  It's easy to be polished, isn't it?  To present well, to be not only competent, but excellent.  Back in Walla Walla, a theology professor as gnarled and thoughtful as an old oak tree, dropped an five-minute thought on my classmates one day--to have the courage to be mediocre.  And the thought rang true in my life experience.  How often am I concerned with appearances and performance, to the exclusion of living life in this moment?  I'd like to live now, here, in this moment, and be a bit less wrapped up in damage-control, what if's, the whirlwind of possible misunderstandings.

        I do like completed thoughts.  I like how they grow and mature into powerful new understandings and perspectives.  I like how they begin to fit, to sync, to click-in with the other puzzle pieces of my worldview, and I like being conscious of these connections.  Yet how vibrant life is, it's colors spinning all around me in such a way that I find I am ever only improvising in this moment--this moment that happens once.  Life seems rather informal in that way, how we all are thrust into the present.  So perhaps my ideas should enter this dance as well, and leave the tuxedo behind so that these thoughts of mine can dash through streets, jump in puddles, and risk being identified as everyday.  I'd rather be a street philosopher, with dirt under my fingernails, wet shoes from the puddles, and full lungs from dashing about and dodging cars and accidentally running into people and tripping over my own two feet.

Yes.  Tripping.  I'm excited about this, about tripping.

I'm going to go do a bit of that now, for it's rather late.

On the Purpose of the Sabbath

Ryan Billington

8/31/11

Orientation to Religion and Medicine

Essay:  A Day for Healing

                My history within the Adventist church places a rich emphasis on Sabbath, God’s holy day of rest.  From the time of my childhood, I can recall many of our family traditions that surrounded this day:  the hectic Friday cleaning after school, the special Friday night meal, attending Sabbath school and church, special Sabbath games after lunch, and a special sundown worship to conclude the Sabbath before the Saturday nights of games and family fun.  Yet despite my extensive history and experience with the Sabbath, I still wrestle with what I’m to do on this holy day.  I suggest in this brief essay that Sabbath is to be a time for reflection that can then stimulating action; a time for re-centering and re-adjusting my life around the redemptive work of God.

My personally defined purpose of Sabbath sounds terrific:  a reflective, action-stimulating day for re-centering upon the salvation possible through Christ.  However, the application of this purpose—any sort of application—is incredible difficult.  Allow me elaborate.  I claim to be a follower of Christ.  In my understanding, this claim means that the central focus of my life and actions are upon Christ and his example, and that I seek to live in a connection with God that alters the my decisions, my daily course.  I am to seek God, and allow that seeking to transform my actions.

How does this purpose of my being a Christian in every day of my life relate to Sabbath?  Sabbath is to be special day—set aside from other days of the week as a unique opportunity for God’s redemptive work.  Therefore, how should Sabbath differ from what I seek to do every day as a follower of Christ?  What in my actions on this seventh day sets Sabbath apart as holy?  What makes this a day dedicated to the salvation of my life and my world; what makes my Sabbath a special time for God’s redemptive work?  After having wrestled for several years with the mechanics of “the Sabbath difference” with only pint-sized results, I have begun to reach beyond my fears of “breaking” the rules of this holy day.  Instead of Sabbath being a twenty-four hour standard of living which I must achieve, the day is becoming a checkpoint for the standard of living to which I prescribe the other six days of the week.  Therefore, instead of Sabbath being a day that I must set apart, it becomes a day when I look and wrestle with how it is that I’m setting my life apart.

                They say that in the Gospels—the record of Jesus’ life while on earth—the majority of his miracles were performed on Sabbath, that on this particular day of the week, Jesus actively sought out individuals to heal.  Often, he did so publically, under direct observation of his greatest critics, such as in Mark 3, and Luke 13.  Might I suggest that Jesus was trying to re-adjust, to re-center the holiness pursued by the Pharisees upon the ways of God.  I think that Jesus was not merely teaching us about Sabbath, or about the ways to keep this day holy, but that he was also pursuing individuals—the Pharisees, the leader of the synagogue—by challenging, begging a readjustment not only of their standard of Sabbath-keeping, but of the standard by which they were living life. 

In the Old Testament, the Sabbath day was set apart by God as a holy day.  But in the New Testament, in John 17 just before his crucifixion, Jesus prays to God for “all who will ever believe in me”, saying, “Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words of truth… I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are—I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one.  Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me” (John 17:20, 22-23 NLT).  From my limited understanding, it seems that we are to be the glory of God, perfected by God’s redemptive work into the holiness and oneness of God Himself.  We are to be holy, not merely keep a holy day.  And once we are living holy lives, perhaps then we will figure out what keeping a holy day is all about.  Perhaps this is a small piece of the reason that Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 NIV).  

Statues

Statues

by Ryan Billington

May 19, 2011

                I’m a college student.  While the fact seems fairly obvious, it seems my brain has its ganglia wrapped around certain parts of childhood over which I become a bit nostalgic.  Like official nap time.  Or Legos.   Or snack time with Cheez-Its and Jell-o squares.  Or flannel graph boards.  Seriously — how cool were flannel graphs?  I think some of my college classes could be greatly benefited by those felted figures, with the professor acting out the different voices and sounds, inching the happy sheep herd slowly toward the waterhole, unaware of the wolf behind the giant felt bolder.  I can feel the tension.  Who wants to watch a felt wolf engulf a herd of happy sheep?  But you know it won’t happen.  Everything always works out right in Flannel Graph Land.  The trees are loaded with apples, the people are always smiling.  I mean — where did we get the idea of warm-fuzzy notes?  Makes me wonder if they ever prescribe flannel graphing for stress relief.

I was walking back in the rain from a vespers I had almost skipped, feeling a bit contemplative.  It was late after vespers, and everyone had disappeared to after-vespers hang-outs except for the few stragglers around me — the few, the proud, the remnant that stays till they shut off the sanctuary lights.  Recently, the Walla Walla University alumni donated funds to create a statue monument depicting Jesus washing the feet of a small group of college students.  Jesus has a small water jar that pours a cord of water into a basin at the students’ feet. The water gurgles a bit as it lands in the basin.  It sounds like happy water — like the water molecules are smiling, just like the kids around Jesus.  The statues are artfully surrounded by curved benches and crisp red brick boxes, holding the small trees and many lights which cast a glow on the footwashing scene.  With the lights pitching a roofless canopy in the falling rain, I watched as droplets of light hovered over the figures, suspended in illumination as new raindrops replaced those that fell, gracefully cascading down upon the stilled figures, melting into rivulets tinged with bronze that traced the contours of the statues to splash upon the sidewalk.  It was beautiful.

                I turned away from the statues, raindrops misting the backs of my calves.  I’d worn shorts to vespers, and the raindrops felt very wet, very alive.  I liked it.  But as I turned, I saw that the rain away from the dripping figurines didn’t look nearly as picturesque as it fell from a black sky; no golden glow was set in each droplet by those lights that warmed the statues.  And the people with whom I walked did not seem nearly as warm and inviting as the bronzed figures.  These real people were cast in shadows with hands shoved into pockets, arms tight to torso, bumping along in disjointed steps.  I think human beings look funny when walking.  I mean, there are a few exceptions, but for the common person, it seems like their gait lacks fluidity, or perhaps that their hips are jutting back just a bit too far so that their torso seems stuck in a perpetual overbite of their legs.  I even feel this way about my walk.  It’s really a shame they don’t have orthodontists for such things — you know, fixing people’s torso overbite.  But back to the people in the rain.  Cast in the shadows, stumbling through the night, the people next to me seemed — well — like less-es; loser aura; stragglers that didn’t get an invite to an after-vespers party; probably those awkward, socially sketchy people that I wouldn’t care to get to know.  This all sounds terribly elitist and judgmental.  But let me clarify:  I wasn’t feeling vindictive or prejudiced, I was just basking in a blah-ness towards friendliness that sucks away any desire for amiable aquaintancing.  I’m overemphasizing these slight feelings a wee bit to set the sort of the mood that I think many of us know well.

                As I walked away from the statues, my mind lingered on the light canopy, the happy water, Jesus and the college students, and the raindrops on my calves that made everything feel so alive.  I thought that the statue scene felt right.  Right, because I felt that it showed what Jesus would be doing on a rainy Friday evening such as this — out in a raincoat, serving the surprised and hesitant individuals that stumbled within his reach.  But then an epiphany hit me like a hello from Pedrito.  I realized — genius that I am — that such a Jesus would no longer be hanging out in his golden canopy.  He’d be cast in flitting shadows that would make his cheeks gaunt and his frame ambiguous, just like the people next to me.  Frankly, I liked Jesus in the warm glow of the lights.  He looked all Jesus-ish and inviting, just like he had as a flannel graph so many years ago.  I was kind of worried what he’d look like outside the lights, like he’d mutate into something else.  Fact is, I think if Jesus had walked across the Kretschmar lawn that night, and I would have thought him a less, with his odd raincoat and his hands stuffed in his pockets, which would have made his hips seem odd and awkwardly placed.  I probably would have avoided him.

                I think that I struggle to imagine a real-life Jesus.  Whenever I imagine him interacting with people, the scene turns into this meaning-packed, tension-filled melodrama that the sages and theology majors will study for centuries, critiquing every move and word and syllable from Christ.  It’s like those flannel graphs from primary class have never gone away, and Jesus is stuck on them, always surreal, with his perfect hair and little red sash.  It seems like if Jesus ever had any fun, then he’d be wasting precious moments in which he could have been ministering to someone.  I can’t picture Jesus just cutting loose and going waterskiing with me in the morning.  It seems I’ve trapped Jesus in this “meaning box,” in this canopy of light-lit, gold-flashing droplets under which everything — every action, thought, and eye shudder — must carry some grandiose purpose that should probably end up changing me, my life, someone else’s life, or — heck — the world.  And well — I guess when I step back and look at my perspective, it doesn’t seem like that fits into a very real reality, into very real relationships — I mean, at least, none that I’ve ever experienced.

                I guess I would hope that I get to know the other Jesus — not the one in the golden canopy — but the one with the funny raincoat and oddly shaped hips.  It seems like that’s the Jesus I need to learn to imagine and follow, the one that can fit into real moments and real relationships and my very real problem situations.  Perhaps one day I’ll learn to escape from the image of Jesus I saw on the flannel graph board, the Jesus that’s trapped in that golden canopy …